Monthly Archives: February 2013

I said, “Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.” Most people can handle a shotgun a hell of a lot better than they can a semiautomatic weapon in terms of both their aim and in terms of their ability to deter people coming.

All I have to say is yeah Joe, and then you find out it was your kid running up to the door afraid of the same noise you heard. How many different times can you give a rule 4 violation as good advice? Seriously, WTF Joe? -B]

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

So I’m beginning to wonder if this whole “boycott” is going to turn into our own worst enemy. We’ve known for a while that the civilian market for firearms has some serious muscle behind it, but I’m beginning to wonder if some are trying to flex it when in the grand scheme we really shouldn’t be.

First, let me state, this isn’t an attack against Sean, I love him, I read him, I’m even hosting his site for him. It isn’t really a smack against the boycott either, it’s a good thing and it helps bring eyes to the subject and show sincerity.

Where I do think we have a problem though is just placing an automatic pass fail on something without really thinking things through. This becomes much like the “zero tolerance” policies at schools that we often joke about being “zero brains”.

Let’s look explicitly at the MagPul situation. MagPul made the following comment on the AR15.com forums.

On it’s surface, applied in a zero tolerance situation, yet they fit the “naughty” list. Except there are some potential hangups for some companies with joining the boycott. Not to mention would it be worth MagPul pulling out of it’s distributors for one state?

Further while MagPul may be able to help influence a distributor, they cannot out right tell a distributor what to do. For example, say I was a distributor and bought a York Arms rifle. Someone had a “law enforcement” exemption, we know there isn’t but for argument sake, and wanted to buy it from me. We do the proper FFL level paper work and I sell it because the price is right to me, read I just paid for two new rifles from Wally. Tell me, did York Arms violate his boycott of shipping arms into New York? While one could create a contract with a distributor detailing those facts, you cannot just throw out existing contracts or get a new contract if your distributor isn’t interested. While you could just stop working with that distributor, that would also mean lost revenue for the manufacturer.

Ultimately though there’s more going on here than just New York. Yeah the NY SAFE act sucks, it’s a big deal, and yes we need to stick it to them. Tell me though, where should MagPul’s priority be regarding the support for the current fight regarding gun rights, with New York or it’s home state of Colorado?

Since the beginning of the flareup in Colorado MagPul has been at the forefront of the fight. Not only is it at the front, they have laid plans to leave Colorado should the magazine ban pass. This isn’t a joke folks, that means either moving tooling, investing in new tooling, new buildings, hiring workers, there is a massive investment and a hit to revenue in that. Injection molding machines aren’t cheap and they aren’t light, and a move is going to be costly. Nothing comes for free.

Then to move further in the fight for their local community MagPul is now directing all of it’s production to residents of Colorado:

No one else is getting anything. The residents of the community in which they call home gets first dibs. That is an honorable thing, overall it probably won’t cost them much, but the fight overall in Colorado with the possible move as well as other stress will cost them money.

I would like to remind everyone that MagPul hasn’t raised prices for their mags. The increase in price seen retail is from distributors and retailers raising prices due to limited supply.

So tell me, why are we going to label MagPul a pariah, boycott them, and otherwise cause them economic harm because some of their distributors still sell to law enforcement in New York? It doesn’t make sense to me and it seems an awful lot like the knee jerk reactions against Alan Gottlieb.

MagPul is making a decision on more than just the black and white we see. They need income to continue their fight in Colorado and to help shield them from the potential losses from a move. While they are fighting all of this, we stand out in the wings ready to turn our backs on them. We need to be very careful about who we label an enemy and it needs to be clear and concise and pretty much black and white.

There is no black and white with MagPul. They are a business and they are trying to protect their business while doing the right thing for their local community first. Had MagPul not had to be in a fight at the local level it is possible they could jumped on the NY boycott train, we ultimately don’t know. The fact is MagPul is doing a lot of things right and undertaking a lot of risk and for us to turn our backs for the actions of distributors seems like a solid way to stab a friendly in the back.

If we’re so upset by it, why aren’t we leading the train to boycott those distributors so that MagPul isn’t the only one stuck with the final bill? How much revenue does MagPul have to sacrifice to prove they’re on our side?

If we’re going to hang MagPul because they don’t further extend their neck over the NY Safe Act, we must immediately hang both Ruger and Remington for their refusal to move out of the state of New York with the passage of the Safe Act. Not to mention Beretta USA has issued the same threat to move to the Maryland state assembly, but I don’t see them on the boycott list either. We either start applying this blindly over all companies equally or we actually use the grey matter between our ears.

Update: So Sean gave me a call tonight and we had a nice discussion. Many of you are going to read through this and you may not catch why the above equaled the naughty list being removed. The reason is simple, we can effectively determine who is actually out there supporting us on the front regarding the NY SAFE Act. We cannot actually determine who is really throwing gun owners under the bus.

MagPul is a great example and they do not deserve to be knifed in the back as a traitor. As Tam has said, we in this community are fantastic at stabbing traitors in the back but we need to be sure they actually are a traitor. Some may not support the boycott not because they support police over the rest of us, but because of legal fears from being publicly traded, or disagreement on how effective that tactic will be at garnering support among the people who actually use the products.

What his list has become though is a fantastic resource for promoting businesses that do support our rights. If you’re in the market for a new AR or something else, you can go down the list and send your business there. We can use that tool to promote companies that have done things that prove their support.

Trying to create a list of those deserving of our wrath is a bit more difficult. Doubly so as we start to try to lean on the bigger companies. What can happen is we paint them into a corner with absolutely no way out. Once that happens we’re no longer seen as friendly or something to be positive for them. When that happens we start to lose our momentum, and on the boycott side that would be very bad.

Don’t look at this as we shouldn’t pay attention to companies who stab us in the back, look at this as, be sure you know a company is a traitor before you knife them. Make sure you have a clearly defined boundary and not an arbitrary one that is honestly self-created and being imposed. The best example of this would be Smith and Wesson deal Clinton Administration in 2000.

Being able to bring the positive and the negative is what makes a tool like this most effective. In this case we can only see clearly those who support us, not those against us and the tool should be used as such.

*Alternate title, In which some people will misconstrue my thoughts into something else.

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

If he honestly thinks that’s the case maybe they should take guns out of the hands of the police. That way they wouldn’t be able mistakenly shoot up little old ladies delivering newspapers…

Andrew – Comment after the discovery of the chauvinistic comments found in here.
February 26th, 2013

[He’s been busy with a new kid so he’s been a little out of the loop on some of the latest stupidity out of the mouths of different representatives. When I pointed out the comments of Joseph Salazar he read them the same way I did.

His reply though almost made me fall out of my chair, actually just about everyone in the bullpen erupted in laughter. If you don’t get it, here’s your reminder. -B]

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

I’m playing around under the hood. I’ve got things hooked up so there a new Facebook page. The blog will be pushing updates there.

For some reason though some odd stuff started happening within the past couple of days and scheduled posts aren’t posting. I’ve tried the few things I can find recommended online but I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I found a plugin that causes the post to go up correctly, but the last post didn’t get pushed to “The Facebooks”.

So I’m going to be beating on things with a wrench for a bit trying to figure out what’s going on. If something seems odd for the next bit, it’s just me trying to figure out how to fix whatever’s broke. So here’s a random picture!

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

Any time someone takes something from you or me, something you or I are not willing to give, it’s a crime and I am here to tell you, you and I have a RIGHT to fight back. Before, during, after, you and I have every right to stand up and say our life matters! I don’t know about you, but I will not lie down and let anyone, not the bad guy, not the anti-gunners, not the man in the White House, to tell my what my value is.

I am not the criminal and I will not allow anyone to punish me as such!

Barron is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.

He has a BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University. Immediately after college he went into work on embedded software and hardware for use in critical infrastructure. This included cryptographic communications equipment as well as command and control devices that were using that communications equipment. Since then he’s worked on just about everything ranging from toys, phones, other critical infrastructure, and even desktop applications. Doing everything from hardware system design, to software architecture, to actually writing software that makes your athletic band do its thing.

Barron Barnett/(The Minuteman Blog) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.